Retired NFL player Michael Oher, whose adoption out of poverty by the white and wealthy Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy became the subject of the 2009 film “The Blind Side,” has filed a petition which states that the Tuohys never officially adopted him.
“The lie of Michael’s adoption is one upon which Co-Conservators Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy have enriched themselves at the expense of their Ward, the undersigned Michael Oher,” the legal filing obtained by ESPN states. “Michael Oher discovered this lie to his chagrin and embarrassment in February of 2023, when he learned that the Conservatorship to which he consented on the basis that doing so would make him a member of the Tuohy family, in fact provided him no familial relationship with the Tuohys.”
The 14-page petition, filed in Shelby County, Tennessee probate court, challenges the narrative that the Tuohys adopted Oher, whom they took into their home as a high school student.
According to the petition, three months after Oher turned 18, the couple tricked him into signing a document that made them his conservators. It enabled the Tuohys to forge a deal for their two birth children to receive royalties from “The Blind Side” (2009), but Oher received nothing from that deal.
TheWrap has reached out to Oher’s attorney.
Oher’s petition requests an end to the Tuohys’ conservatorship as well as an order for the couple to stop using his name and likeness. He wrote in his 2011 memoir, “I Beat the Odds,” that the couple told him about the conservatorship, “it means pretty much the exact same thing as ‘adoptive parents,’ but that the laws were just written in a way that took my age into account.”
Adoption would have meant that Oher became a legal member of the Tuohy family while retaining the ability to manage his own financial matters.
“Since at least August of 2004, Conservators have allowed Michael, specifically, and the public, generally, to believe that Conservators adopted Michael and have used that untruth to gain financial advantages for themselves and the foundations which they own or which they exercise control,” the petition says. “All monies made in said manner should in all conscience and equity be disgorged and paid over to the said ward, Michael Oher.”
The filing goes deep into the details of the film as well, such as the profit made by the Tuohy family, as well as the people involved in representing the Tuohys versus Oher. The film’s release coincided with Oher’s rise in the NFL.
